The present invention relates to crank handles for trailer landing gear assemblies.
Landing gear assemblies for semitrailers and the like use a cranking system with a handle which can be locked either in a storage position or in an extended standard position whereby the handle can be used to crank the landing gear up or down. The handle displayed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,423,518 is indicative of the kind of handle that has been used with landing gear cranking systems for a number of years. Although this type of handle works very well for the low-speed, high-torque situation when the trailer contains a heavy load, it does not allow the user to maximize the high-speed gear when extending and retracting the legs from the stored (retracted) position to the extended position (when the foot makes contact with the ground). The user is restricted because of the distance the handle must travel to make a single revolution.
Many landing gear crank systems today for semitrailers or the like use a two-speed system, with a high speed for lower weight load and a low speed for higher torque with a heavy load. Such a system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,632,086. Again, the handle previously used does not allow maximum cranking speed under no load, even when the high-speed gear is used.
Accordingly, it is a desire of the semitrailer industry to have a handle that permits faster cranking speed when the crank is used under no load to maximize use of the high-speed gear in landing gear crank systems.